The PS3 is an extremely well-built, highly reliable machine. So we were fairly certain that when Belgian game retailer Games Mania claimed their 40GB models had a 40% failure rate, either the claim was extremely isolated or completely bogus. In short, we were right. Sony has issued an official statement to "categorically deny" the claims.

SCEE's David Reeves also mentioned he was "disappointed that such extremely sloppy journalism has resulted in this totally inaccurate story." We are too, Mr. Reeves. Just like we're disappointed by the lack of Blu-ray 1.1 spec in the new firmware, disappointed that difficult PS3 development has led to lousy ports and disappointed...ah, we kid. In fairness, SCEE actually went on record to say that our sister site Kotaku was not part of said disappointment, which has to be worth something. And that, friends, is why we have rumors. [kotaku]